Education
An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.
An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.
Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste … Let’s put it this way: if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn’t get our deposit back.
— John Ross
The severest test of a character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.
I suspect that this principle of character also applies to the ability to refrain from chiming in when someone in the room is explaining something and you can’t resist what you think is a better explanation. I know that is certainly one of my challenges.
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements but moral acts:
— Sydney J. Harris, Pieces of Eight
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
— Charles Darwin
Choose the experiences in life that offer the most anecdotal value — that is, look for the opportunities that have the most likelihood of producing a cool story.
At the The Moth Chicago Grand Slam this year Peter Sagal (yes, that Peter Sagal) relayed these words of wisdom, passed on to him by a theater professor at Lewis and Clark College many years before.
With a tip of the hat to The Moth, make it a story-worthy life.
I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don’t even invite me.
— Dave Barry
In some ways, Dave Barry is saying the same thing, in his comedic genius sort of way, that John Morely said yesterday.